While the prior art is replete with musical chairs for children, as can be seen by reference to U.S. Pat. Nos.: 2,667,802; 2,251,141 and 2,628,665, these devices are intended and designed solely for the childs amusement, or to reward good behavior. In addition, all of the these reward devices normally require the application of the childs weight on the seat portion, in order to activate the musical means. In instances where a child is to be punished for bad behavior; however, these weight activated devices are not only unacceptable, but are counterproductive to the purpose intended.
A well known and widely used disciplinary technique is called "time-out" which consists of placing a child on a chair in the corner for a limited amount of time (e.g., 3-5 minutes) following noncompliance or other disruptive behavior. Oftentimes, however, the child will leave or repeatly get off the chair prior to the end of the 3-minute interval, thus requiring continual parental monitoring of the child while in "time-out". In addition, to the task interference created by continual parental monitoring, overt parental attention may inadvertently serve to reward the child's negative behavior. Moreover, should the parent decide not to monitor the child or experience an interruption in monitoring (e.g., answering the telephone), the child could easily remove him/herself from "time-out", thus defeating the original purpose of the disciplinary technique.
The purpose of this invention is to provide a means by which the parent can place the noncompliant/disruptive child in "time-out", and re-initiate household tasks in another room (e.g., cooking in the kitchen), while being assured that the child is still sitting on the "time-out" chair.
To date no one has devised a device, which is responsive to the removal of a childs weight from a seat or stool, to activate a signaling device, that warns the parent or teacher that the child is being disobedient, and makes them immediately aware that the off-the-seat rule has been violated, so that corrective measures such as spanking, extra time on the seat, or loss of privileges can be imposed.